9/15/2018

"That's the plan. It is not the plan, that's the movie. Our movie wants to honor the comics as close as we can tonally. In the comics, he bites people's heads off and eats brains. It would be weird to make a movie with Venom if he wasn't doing that. "

That was Venom director Ruben Fleischer back in July when asked specifically if the film would be R-rated, which would be fitting in tone with the character. Well, sadly, we ain't getting an R-rated Venom movie. It's been saddled with the teen-friendly PG-13 label, which we already knew was likely to happen because Sony wants to stay in Marvel's good graces. But that is definitely disappointing to fans of the brain-eating symbiote Tom Hardy will be playing, and clearly Fleischer knows it because now he's trying to dangle the possibility of an unrated cut.

Speaking with Fandango, Fleischer talks about the direction he wanted to go with Venom, and he almost sounds apologetic in that the final result isn't at all what he initially wanted or promised...

“When I set out to make the movie, I wanted to distinguish the film tonally, and I wanted to make a darker, grittier, kind of edgier comic book movie that also has a strong horror element, which is inherent to the character and the comic. Those were the aspects: darker, edgier, grittier,” Fleischer said.

Dark 'n gritty is simply too generic a label at this point. It means nothing. The DCEU was dark 'n gritty and that didn't work. Venom should have those attributes but be something more. I always hated the anti-hero label for a character like Venom because he's mostly about feeding his urges, whatever they may be. Sometimes that means eating a guy's brains, which is hardly the act of a superhero...

“I don’t know how heroic that is, but that’s definitely true to the nature of the character and what he’s doing in this film.”
Okay, so how is a character that eats brains in a PG-13 movie? Yeah, Fleischer could hide it offscreen but and that's probably what he'll do. But what about fans who want all of that stuff kept in? The director isn't denying the possibility of an uncut version of the film, although at this point I'm not likely to believe anything Fleischer has to say because clearly he is not the guy with creative control...

“I wouldn’t rule anything out. We’ll have to see where it lands, I guess, but I wouldn’t rule anything out,” Fleischer says.

Venom hits theaters on October 5th and I hope they keep that awful Eminem song out of the final cut.